What They Don't Know
by HamPickleSandwich
Summary: 'She knows that he too, will be quietly exhausted by the end of the day; but it probably won't be for the same reasons.' Bad days always begin with screaming. Oneshot.


_**I know this is probably disappointing to all of you who were holding out for an update of The Apartment, but I just recently saw the Hunger Games movie, which I loved, so then I had to read the books, which I loved even more, and then I had to write something, and then I wrote this. Anyway... I better get on with it - The Hunger Games trilogy is waaaay too awesome to belong to me, but I hope you like this piece anyway, as grim as it is. I promise I'll write something a bit lighter next time! Love, HamPickleSandwich**_

* * *

My friends wonder why I never talk about my parents, why I never go with them to the bakery after school. They all tell me how good the bread is there, how beautiful the little cakes are, how tasty the little delicacies are. They tell me about how they see her with that bow and arrow on the odd occasion that they've been woken by something or other. But they don't see what happens at home.

* * *

Rue shudders to life after hearing her mother scream each morning. Typically it's a single cry before she presumably wakes and reassures herself with her father's presence, but it feels as if her mother has been screaming for hours. As far as Rue knows this has been routine for as long as she can remember – though it's only been three years since the screaming incorporated itself into her routine, waking her up before she has to pretend to sleep; carefully arranging her features into a peaceful expression as her mother looks into her room each occasion she has these nightmares to ensure her children don't notice.

But her dad knows. As soon as her mother leaves for the Meadow Rue is awake, meticulously going through the motions of cracking eggs and toasting bread. She knows that her father is there even before he leaves their bedroom, having over the years become very familiar with his heavy tread and the clunk of his prosthetic. She knows that he too, will be quietly exhausted by the end of the day; but it probably won't be for the same reasons.

Peeta only murmurs a greeting, still swimming in a haze of sleep and vague memories as he kisses her forehead softly. It is winter outside, and she leans into his warmth until the stove heats the room proficiently. She eats quietly as he goes through his own ingrained motions of preparing breakfast – a ritual for father and daughter on these off days that begin with screams. Dawn rises and catches on her brown hair; the red tones catching her father's eye. He has painted this before, each time unsatisfied by the colour that doesn't quite match the one he sees in her hair now.

Katniss, like Peeta, is softly spoken when greeting her on one of these mornings. Her mother loves her, this is certainly true, but Rue finds it a little disheartening on mornings like these when the so-called Mockingjay will not look into her eyes without fear, or, worse, when she will not look into her eyes at all. Maybe her mother does know of her awareness to those nightmares, but regardless she says nothing. Rue leaves to dress after Felix emerges; rubbing his eyes with balled fists.

School is routine. The morning drags on as the teachers cautiously give tidbits of information regarding the enigmatic Capitol, before insisting that they should write sentences about the importance of the way a person speaks to another. At lunch she sits with a group of girls she has known since she was quite small, smirking as Miriam tells a joke, blushing as Daisy notices that once again, Lev has been looking at her whenever her head is turned. The fixed smile strains as Patience notices that her head is drifting ever closer to the crook of her elbow with fatigue in the afternoons.

Rue knows for sure that her father has had a bad day when Senia laments over the closed bakery door. Although she would very much like to sleep she runs, propelled by the vague image of her brother, his fingers bloodied by trying to pick up broken glass, his face bruised by those strong baker's hands. When she doesn't see him immediately she calls for him desperately, yanking at the locked doors of her home as if he were trapped in a fire. But Felix emerges from behind Haymitch's house, hands and face unblemished, if not scratched by chicken wire. He was in the geese pen, he admits, holding up the feathers he had collected.

Rue holds Felix close as she tries not to imagine the anguish of relieving her father's excruciating memories, trying not to let tears fall when she hears the faint cries of her mother trying to reach beyond that venomous Hyde that Peeta Mellark is lost to on days like this.

When he returns, the sun has fallen. Rue doesn't think twice about his lips, swollen with pacifying kisses, or her eyes, red with desperate tears. The family eats in silence, each clink of cutlery on crockery tentative as if it will send their patriarch into an explosion of fury once more. Katniss stops eating when his hands begin to shake, dropping the butter knife onto the tablecloth by accident. Felix looks at her, bewildered, when their parents leave the table. It hasn't been this bad for years.

When Felix goes to bed he asks if Rue can sing to him, and though it embarrasses her to sing in front of anyone, she finds she cannot refuse on nights like this. He is lulled to sleep by her voice, quieted by the final verses of The Hanging Tree. She is not the singer her mother is, but it helps Felix to sleep.

Her parents sit by the cleared dining table when she emerges with her homework. She prefers to work late, when she does not have to think of Felix, or of her friends looking for snacks in the bakery, or of Lev, whose cheeks turn red when it is her turn to read in class. But it is all that is on her mind when she can no longer stand the hollow look reflected by her parents.

* * *

My friends don't understand what it's like to have parents who survived the Hunger Games twice. They don't hear the Mockingjay screaming for her dead little sister. They don't know Peeta Mellark sometimes tries to kill a Katniss Everdeen fabricated by the old Capitol.

The worst part is that Mom and Dad don't even know that I have nightmares of my own sometimes, when I stay up late to wonder what could have possibly made my parents so broken.


End file.
